A TRIBE CALLED QUEST

Behind many of Rolex’s iconic designs are some of the world’s bravest adventurers. Gordon Ng reports on the legacy of the Swiss luxury watchmaker’s enduring support of the explorer community.

Behind some of Rolex’s most iconic designs are some really brave men and women.

Often, a big part of community building calls for committing to a cause. In the case of Rolex, one such cause has been to support pioneering explorers on their expeditions to discover some of the most extreme and untouched places on the planet. According to the brand’s founder Hans Wilsdorf, the world is like a “living laboratory” and arming these intrepid men and women with its timepieces would surely put the company’s innovations to the test. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were equipped with Rolexes when they made history for becoming the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. The milestone would give birth to the sophisticated yet hardy Explorer. Its simple design with large hour markers – punctuated by the numerals three, six and nine – are meant to ensure legibility and accuracy with telling time no matter the circumstances. (Eighteen years later in 1971, the brand would introduce the Explorer II, which features the addition of a date display, 24-hour hand and fixed bezel with a 24-hour graduation to help one distinguish between night and day – handy for explorers of dark environments and the polar regions.) As their names suggest, Rolex’s Sea-Dweller and Deepsea models are both connected to notable oceanic missions. Launched in 1967, the former possesses a patented helium escape valve that helps keep the watch functioning despite the change in pressure when a diver decompresses (read: ascends from depth). To test it, Rolex partnered the underwater habitat project Tektite in 1969 as well as 1970, which saw aquanauts including the marine biologist Sylvia Earle spend two weeks or more underwater. Meanwhile the Deepsea is like a souped-up version of the Sea-Dweller with the ability to stay water-resistant for up to depths of over three times more. It also inspired Titanic film-maker James Cameron’s 2012 record-breaking solo dive 10,908m to the Mariana Trench – the deepest point on Earth. Even what’s often thought of as the most quintessential design from Rolex owes its fame in part to one brave voyager. In 1927, the brand outfitted the British secretary Mercedes Gleitze with its hermetically sealed Oyster wristwatch for her quest to become the first woman to swim the English channel. She succeeded, of course, and in doing so, cemented the Oyster’s reputation as the world’s first waterproof timepiece. Its descendant, the Oyster Perpetual, has since become as much a symbol of style as it is of everyday reliability with its various case sizes and dial colours. Consider that a reminder of how there’s an explorer in all of us.